Pressure leads to twin suicides

A family member holds Om Prakash’s daughter at their Patna residence on Saturday. Picture by Ranjeet Kumar Dey

Patna, May 10: Alleged “mental torture” at the workplace and college prodded a 27-year-old professional and a 21-year-old student to commit suicide in the past 24 hours in the city.

According to police, Om Prakash came back from his office around 7pm last evening. His family members said Om was quite normal who also played with his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter Arya before going to sleep. However, late in the night, Om moved to another vacant room where he hanged himself from the ceiling fan with a towel.

No suicide note has been found, the police said.

Om was living on rent in the ground floor of the house, near Munna Chowk, belonging to one Satyadev Sinha for almost a year now. He used to live with his wife Sunita and child.

This morning around 7am, Sunita got up and did not find her husband. She went to the next room and was shocked to see her husband hanging. Other members of the family were informed immediately and the police, too.

The body has been sent for post-mortem.

“The family has pointed fingers at three persons who were apparently torturing Om threatening him constantly. The family told the police that Om was being threatened to be laid off from his job time and again and he had mentioned the same to his wife. These men are Bachchan, who is the regional manager with the same cellphone company where Om used to work as the tertiary manager, a cellphone dealer and another person. Sunita could not recall their names and neither could say the first name of Bachchan. The family has lodged an FIR against the three,” an officer at Patrakar Nagar police station said.

Alleging harassment as well as physical and mental torture, Sujeet Kumar alias Prabhat, who was a student of Tathagat ITI institute, died at a private hospital today after consuming poison and battling with his life for around 48 hours.

“A suicide note had been recovered from Prabhat’s possession in which he named three persons. One of them has been identified as Babloo Singh, director of the institute. Another one, Rajkumar, is an office-bearer with the institute while the third has been referred to as ‘Bada Baboo’. The note says that the three were torturing him badly and were also beating him up asking him to cough up Rs 90,000 if he needed a job. The note said that the boy had already paid Rs 50,000 during his admission,” a police officer said.

After the boy consumed the poison pills, he had called up his elder brother Manoj, who resides in Ranchi. With Prabhat losing consciousness, he was admitted to a private hospital at the New Bypass area by his friends. His family members arrived here this morning and he was transferred to the Rajeshwar Hospital where he died around 12.30pm, the sources said.

The family of the deceased came up to the Patna SSP Manu Maharaaj’s office this evening alleging that the local Patrakar Nagar police station officials did not pay heed to their repeated calls and did not take Prabhat’s statement while he was admitted to the hospital.